“I Was Aquaman (Until I Tried to Breathe Underwater)” What Childhood Taught Me About Faith, Failure, and the Spirit of God
Breathe Through Me, Lord
What was your dream when you were five years old?
I used to dream I could breathe underwater. All the time. Sometimes… I still do.
Not just holding my breath — I mean really breathing. Deep, full, natural — like I was made for it.
When I was still small, back when dreams and reality blurred together, I’d dream the whole house filled with water — not like a flood or something scary, but like it had always been that way.
The living room. The kitchen. Even the hallway — all underwater.
I remember swimming past the television, turning corners with ease, lungs full, no fear at all. I was Aquaman.
It felt peaceful. It felt normal. It felt like I belonged there.
Have you ever breathed in water?
I decided to try it.
We went to my grandfather’s pool one early summer — the water was ice cold. I eased myself down the metal ladder, held my breath, went under the surface… and opened my mouth.
And… nothing.
Well, not nothing. There was coughing. Burning in my nostrils. A fast, painful reminder: it doesn’t work.
Of course it doesn’t.
I came up sputtering, reality crashing back in. I wasn’t made to breathe underwater. Not yet.
But I kept dreaming. Sometimes I was back in the house, sometimes the pool, sometimes the ocean… always underwater. Always breathing.
I think that dream stayed with me because it spoke of something deeper: a longing for a different kind of breath — a life not tied to the limitations of flesh. Something spiritual. Something eternal.
Let me step back a moment.
When I was really little, I loved the water. We lived near the Jersey Shore, and my mom — who could swim like she was born in the sea — used to take us to the beach all the time.
My Aunt Pat, my mom, little Charlie, Tammy, my sister and me — all piled into a hot car, battling traffic just to find our place in the sand, to be near the water… the ocean.
I was maybe three or four years old when I got caught in one of those little curls — one of those waves that breaks right at the shore. It rolled me around like laundry in a washing machine. I remember the panic.
After that, I didn’t even want to get wet.
So my mom signed us up for swim lessons at the YMCA in Lakewood.
I remember clutching the edge of the pool, kicking my feet, learning to float. And slowly… breath by breath… I got it. I started to trust the water again.
Until graduation day.
I wanted to show my mom I could dive. So I ran — full speed — and launched headfirst… into the shallow end.
Cracked my head on the bottom. Blood in the water. They pulled me out fast. No fractured skull, thank God.
And you know what I asked her when I came to?
“Did you see my dive?”
Even through failure, even bleeding, I just wanted to be seen.
Funny how much that’s still true. We try. We stumble. And deep down, we still want God to see us — even in the shallow end.
Back to the water
That year, I found my way back to the water. Not the ocean — it was too cold in May — but my grandfather’s pool.
And that’s when my parents got me something that almost made my dream feel real: a snorkel and mask. A long tube bringing air from above down to where I was. A mask that let me see clearly beneath the surface.
I remember the first time I used it — face in the water, heart pounding — thinking:
“I’m doing it… I’m breathing down here!”
But of course, I wasn’t breathing in the water. I was breathing while in it — pulling air from another place.
Now, as a Christian, I understand what that means: that’s exactly what it is to follow Christ.
We don’t live by the breath of this world. We survive by drawing life from above.
“If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above… Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.”
— Colossians 3:1–2“In Him we live, and move, and have our being…”
— Acts 17:28
We were born again to breathe different air. Our spiritual lungs can’t survive long on the things of this world.
Did you know you can drown in just a few inches of water?
Christian — how deep into this world do you think you can go while breathing its atmosphere into lungs that were remade for heaven?
The hose trick (that didn’t work)
I once tried to engineer my own breathing system.
I figured, if a snorkel works, a garden hose must work better, right?
So I sank to the bottom of the pool. My cousin Annie held one end of the hose above water… and I waited.
But no air came. Even at five or six feet, I couldn’t draw in a single breath.
My body knew it before my brain did.
Pressure can kill you.
Human effort can’t overpower it. No clever fix. No workaround. Not in the pool. Not in the ocean. And not in the Spirit.
“Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.”
— Zechariah 4:6
The patent that made me laugh… and think
Years later, a friend — always inventing — invited me over. He handed me a folder titled: Underwater Breathing Apparatus.
Inside was a sketch of a raft, a hose going straight down — twenty feet or more — and a diver standing on the ocean floor, breathing through it.
I smiled and said, “Yeah… I’ve tried that. That won’t work.”
He laughed. “Yeah — that’s what they told me at the patent office too.”
And it made me think:
How many people try to live for God the same way? Dragging a man-made system into a place we were never designed to be without Him. Trying to breathe through effort, or religion, or invention.
You can’t fake air. And you can’t fake being filled with the Holy Spirit.
“The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.”
— Job 33:4
The suit I never wore
I never did wear one of those deep-sea diving suits I used to dream about — the kind with the brass helmet and the air pumped in from above.
But I understand now: that suit is a picture. A type of Christ.
“Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ…”
— Romans 13:14
He doesn’t just give you strength — He becomes your strength. He doesn’t just supply breath — He is your breath.
“And He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.”
— John 20:22
Deep places, sacred silence
Sometimes, when God takes you into deep places, you find yourself in silence. Stillness.
You try to speak — it sounds like bubbles. You try to explain — but no one on the surface understands.
But you're not alone.
“The Comforter… shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance.”
— John 14:26
In the quiet, the Word rises. Grace you didn’t know you needed. Strength you didn’t know you had.
“Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of Thy waterspouts…”
— Psalm 42:7“Even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me.”
— Psalm 139:10
Coming back up
And when you surface — when the mission is done, or the season lifts — you realize:
I was equipped for a depth most cannot enter.
Not because of who I am… but because of who filled me.
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me…”
— Galatians 2:20
So I breathe in again. Not just oxygen — but gratitude.